New training guides for dementia carers released by Age Cymru

Age Cymru’s award-winning programme My Home Life Cymru has announced the publication of two training booklets designed to better inform carers of the challenges they will face in delivering effective dementia care.

‘Open your heart to see me – a guide to working in dementia care’ and ‘Getting to know you – a guide for reminiscence and life story work with older people living in care homes’, focus upon maintaining a positive workforce and culture, together with the benefits that can be achieved through reminiscence therapy and the use of pictures in telling life stories to those with memory loss.

Programme manager John Moore commented on the development of the guides: "For the last two and a half years, My Home Life Cymru has been speaking to care and nursing home residents, relatives and staff across Wales.

"We’ve been trying to discover the ideas and innovations that improve the lives of people involved with care and nursing homes.

"And we’ve identified that a significant contribution we can make in achieving this goal is to provide training materials for staff on working with people with dementia and on the benefits of sharing memories.”

Mr Moore continues: "The My Home Life Cymru is very proud of these new training guides that have already been used to provide valuable training to care home staff involved in the programme.

"The training was well-received and we and hope that the guides make a real difference in achieving our goal of improving quality of life for people involved with care homes across Wales."

More than 42,000 people are estimated to have dementia in Wales, with numbers expected to double the next thirty years as the country, like the rest of the UK, experiences an ageing population boom.

The My Home Life Cymru programme was presented with the Innovation in Care Awards at the Wales Care Awards 2010.